so today we're covering genetically modified organisms
but let's start a little bit earlier by covering a few terms so biotechnology is
the manipulation of organisms
or their components to make useful products now technically by this
definition biotechnology has been taking place for hundreds and thousands of
years
so it's been used to make bread by using yeast
it's been used to selectively breed livestock for desired traits
but now that its in the 2000s
biotechnology has a completely different definition so in this era
the use of biotechnology or DNA technology is used to study in
manipulate genetic material
modify specific genes and also move genes between organisms
so in order to do this we have to create what's called
recombinant DNA so recombinant DNA is formed when scientists combine
nucleotide sequences ur
pieces of DNA from two or more different sources
to form a single DNA molecule and this recombinant
DNA technology is used widely in genetic engineering
which is the direct manipulation of genes for practical purposes
so one example of this is taking the mouse genome
and inserting the green fluorescent protein which is a protein that we get
from jellyfish
and so you can end up in a manner of speaking with glow in the dark
mice and this was done in order to study
which genes were being on and which genes were off in these particular mice
not just to create cool little animals for you to take home, so applications of this
include making humulin to food products to making farm animals
and we'll go through each of these categories today so
by transferring the gene of a desired protein into a bacteria or yeast
proteins that are naturally present in only tiny tiny amounts
in these are organisms can be made in much larger quantities
and then harvested for our use so an example of this is
making humulin so in 1982
very first are genetically engineered pharmaceutical product was sold
and this was our the creation of human insulin
so human insulin was produced by genetically modified bacteria
and this was the very first recombinant DNA drug technology that was approved
by the FDA
and today it's used by about 2 to 4 million
Americans and also people worldwide
with diabetes so what they did is they took the gene for human insulin
and the inserted into the bacteria or inserted into yeast
and then they grow those bacteria and those yeast in very large
fermentation vats that are just simply filled with those organisms
plus a growth media that makes them very happy and then
for these particular organisms that insulin is a waste product
so they simply excreted so we can siphon off the fluid siphon all those
materials off
and then we can collect that and purify the insulin
so that then we can use that for medicine today
and see can see again you've got just these very large vats they grow into
siphon off the fluid provide more growth media so the bacteria and the yeast can keep
growing
and making that insulin for us
in addition to that DNA technology can be used to produce medically valuable
molecules including human growth hormone or HGH
the hormone EPO or erythropoeitin
and also be used to make vaccines so human growth hormone can be given to
individuals
who are have a naturally short stature
and so that can help them grow to the appropriate height
the human hormone EPO can stimulate the production of red blood cell so somebody
has anemia in isn't able to make enough of these red blood cells
we can give them this drug product that's produced from those other
organisms those genetically modified organisms
and treat the amemia, now the hormone EPO is also been known
to be given to athletes to give them a little bit of a boost
when they're doing very highly competitive activities where they
need a little bit more oxygen
to give them a competitive edge but again it can be used
for a lot of medical treatment as well it can also be used to make
vaccines, so vaccines are harmless variants or derivatives of a pathogen
used to prevent infectious diseases so again we can go in we can now look at
for example a virus genome take out all the
genes that would cause us harm and then we can give a dummy version of the virus
genome into our system and we can create
immunity to it and so then we will be able
to be protected in the event that we actually saw the real virus in nature
so all these things can use the genetic modification
these organisms to provide something very useful for us
so let's move onto food so genetically modified foods or GM foods
are quickly replacing some traditional plant breeding programs
so normally in order to create the perfect plant
so maybe drought resistant, pest resistant, things like that
you have to take plant A and plant B, breed them together
and then wait for them to grow up through their entire growing season
but now we can take all of our desired genes
splice them together to create a genetically modified organism
and within less than a year we can start creating a lot of these different
plants for our use
so genetically modified organisms means that it has one or more genes that are acquired
by
artificial means so some in these genes could be absolutely natural
absolutely normal genes from the same kind of plant or
these genes could be completely synthetic something that we made up new
in the lab
and then these transgenic organisms again are containing one gene
from another organism typically from another species
so in the US actually about 50 percent of our corn crops about 75 percent of
our soybean and cotton crops are genetically modified
and one reason for this is that our corn plants were modified to be more
resistant to an insect infestation
from the European corn borer but the corn is perfectly safe as far as we know
and I were able to consume it use in our daily life
no problems another example of a genetically modified food is
golden rice
so around the world about 250 million children worldwide
are vitamin A deficient and so an organization was able to create
rice that was able to produce more beta carotene
which is something that our bodies can then convert to vitamin A
and so they were able to change regular rice which is very low in
vitamin A
to something that was very rich in that beta carotene
that we can convert vitamin A and so the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and
many others have started offering
this golden rice to many different countries around the world where they have this
vitamin A deficiency
but the challenge is finding a government or group for people willing
to eat the Golden Rice
so unfortunately right now even though this
spectacular food product is available maybe just grown the same way as the
regular rice products would be grown
people are afraid of this as they don't know is something bad gonna happen to me
unfortunately
now another example of a genetically modified organism is one
we'd call a farm animal or pharmacy animal so in 2009 the FDA approved the first
drug
produced by livestock that was engineered again to carry a human gene
and so you can see these goats right here these guys are able to make a
product that's called
anti thrombin, so normally in order to
get a lot of anti thrombin we have to isolate it from human blood donations
but this one little goat here in one year
just collecting its milk can produce as much anti thrombin
as ninety thousand human blood donations
so this little guy right here is going to be very useful making that product
for us
DNA technology may eventually one day produce
or replaced some traditional animal breeding but again it is not currently used
to produce transgenic animals sold as food
so again even the United States is a little bit afraid and some of these
genetically modified organisms
and so we're studying them right now the see are they safe do they have the exact
same nutritional
qualities and things like that we can also are produce some
meat products so we can create animals that have larger muscles
and we can also create animals that are a little bit healthier to eat
so you can see these little pigs right here you can genetically modify them
to start making omega-3 fatty acids this is a fatty acid that we can't make
ourselves
but we can now have these pigs that are enriched with that
and that actually can protect us from heart disease and other things